Rosie’s World: A Little Bit of Funny

By Rosie Moore

How many of you remember “Calvin and Hobbes”? I imagine quite a few of you do, especially those who had children who enjoyed their antics when they were young. A comic strip about a boy and his imaginary friend, it was created by Bill Watterson. He was born July 5, 1958 in Washington, D.C but when he was six years old his family moved to Chagrin Falls, Ohio. As a child, unlike his creation, he had no imaginary friends but he did have a love for drawing. He was inspired by classic cartoonist, Charles Shultz (Peanuts) and illustrator Walt Kelly (Pogo).

After graduating from Kenyon College in Ohio in 1980 he was immediately offered a job as an editorial cartoonist at the Cincinnati Post. The editors were unimpressed by his work and a year later he found himself unemployed and living back home with his parents. He decided to abandon political cartoons and returned to his first love, comic strips.

He developed the strip called “Calvin and Hobbes” named after philosophers John Calvin and Thomas Hobbes. Readers loved Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin’s flight of wild imagination, often undertaken while clad in rocket ship underpants endeared him to folks from the ages of two to ninety-two. Mr. Watterson first published the strip when he was twenty-seven then retired it ten years later when he was thirty-seven on December 31, 1995. He keeps a low profile and rarely gives interviews. It would be nice if he could tickle our fancies with another comic strip but apparently that hasn’t happened yet.

Here is a tiny tidbit of Calvin’s ingenious ideas as portrayed in the book,

“The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes” by Mr. Watterson:

Calvin: Election day is coming up, Dad. People want to know where you stand on the issues.

Dad: Such as?

Calvin: Later bedtimes, expanded TV privileges, shorter school weeks, and less discipline.

Dad: I’m against them all!

Calvin: I see. How’s your IRA? Pretty well funded?

Dad: Go to bed.

Of course, this would be funnier if you saw the strip but it can instill laughter in me. I believe this thick tome has many hours of enjoyable moments. Laughter is the best medicine, you know.

Thought for the day: Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died. Erma Bombeck